GDP growth a false dawn: DA
The South African economy grew by 3% in the second quarter of 2013, Statistics SA said on Tuesday (27 August).
This was compared to a 0.9% rise in the real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter of the year, Stats SA said.
And while the DA welcome the improved GDP annualised growth rate of 3.0%, it said that with the country entering strike season, “sadly, economic growth in the third quarter is likely to slow down again”.
The rand has also weakened against the dollar in recent sessions, bid at R10.40 amid a lack of investor confidence in emerging markets and continued labour unrest.
A softening of the local currency would likely translate into an increase in prices of consumer electronics. A weakening of the rand-dollar exchange rate has a domino effect on the prices of gadgets such as personal computing devices and televisions, local vendor Mustek warns.
It also has an impact on the petrol price, which has skyrocketed in recent months. On August 7, the price reached new record highs to R13.23 a litre in Gauteng for 95 Octane, while at the coast it shifted up to R12.86 a litre.
The political party said that the reported 5.0% decrease in primary sector economic growth during the second quarter – a sector that should be at the forefront of job creation in the economy, is “extremely worrying to note”.
“Our economic growth prospects remain far from what is needed to create jobs for the nearly 8 million unemployed South Africans.
“With 1.4 million South Africans joining the ranks of the unemployed since President Zuma took office in 2009, much still needs to be done to build a growing economy that creates jobs,” the DA said.
The party said that the National Development Plan (NDP) recognises that the only way to create jobs and eliminate unemployment and poverty is to create sustained economic growth exceeding 5%.
The Reserve Bank recently revised our economic growth forecast for 2013 down to 2% while the rest of Africa is expected to grow at an average rate of 5.5% this year. Our economic growth is also lagging far behind other developing economies like Thailand (4.3%), Indonesia (5.9%) and Chile (4.6%).
The main contributors to the increase in economic activity in the second quarter of 2013 were the manufacturing industry (1.7%), finance, real estate and business services (0.8%) and the wholesale, retail and motor trade; catering and accommodation industry (0.4%).
Sectors which weighed included the mining and quarrying industry at -0.3% and the agriculture, forestry and fishing industry at -0.1%.
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